When certain people scratch their heads and wonder why they're treated as outcasts of the World society and continually live in the Third World, I'll keep my mouth shut.
Why stop now, since you're riding a nice little wave of Islamophobia while ignoring western imperialism?
What happened was, plain and simple, a TERRORIST ATTACK by Al Qaeda
A country that automatically designates all men and adolescent boys as "militants" when they are killed by drones has no business calling a strike on a government official in a CIA front "terrorism".
1. Western powers spend over 10 years bombing the shit out of predominantly Muslim nations, torture Muslims, drone bomb their countries without declarations of war, impose economy-ruining sanctions, and talk a lot about how much they like freedom and Democracy while simultaneously supporting brutal, but western-friendly, dictators. Case in point: when the U.S. was helping to "liberate" Libya from Gaddafi because he was "attacking his own people", it didn't even bother to stop arms shipments to the governments of Yemen and Bahrain, who were using them to brutally crackdown on their opposition.
2. Muslims get sick of western imperialism, riots ensue.
3. Western media and politicians pretend it's all about a Youtube clip.
He did not lie as I just proved you. The court accepted a set of parameters of what would amount to "sexual relations". Blow jobs fell outside of those set of parameters. Parameters set by the judge you cite, who also rule that whatever happened between Clinton and Monica was irrelevant to whatever happened with Clinton and Jones.
You're wrong. Clinton gave a truthful response in court as to whether or not he had "sexual relations" with Lewisnsky. Deal with it.
What you think of the law is irrelevant to a law being in existence.
Hand waving. If it's not relevant, it's not perjury. Deal with that, too.
I do not care if it is Bush, Clinton, Obama, Reagan, or George Washington, it is wrong. So take your partisan but hurt "but they said something bad about Clinton" rant and shove it somewhere more appropriate.
Your projection on butthurt over being called out on your selective standards and morals is noted. The simple fact is that you wingers started and stopped caring about perjury when it was a Republican administration doing it just as you stopped caring when the draft dodgers were Republicans.
You, and your hypocritical twins the Obots, can blow that out your asses.
On one side, we have a couple thousand deaths due to drone strikes. On the other, we have a couple hundred thousand deaths due to pointless war. No rational human being would say that there isn't a "substantial difference".
Or, I don't know, go for Option 3: don't drone bomb or invade people that have not attacked us nor are in the process of attacking us. Here's your sign.....
By that reasoning (which I'd only slightly dispute), the massacre in Iraq began long before we invaded. The sanctions on Iraq were undermining its infrastructure since 1990.
And killed half a million Iraqi children by restricting food and medicine. Which the Secretary of State said was "worth it" when asked.
The whole point of sanctions is to make life under the sanctioned government so awful that they have to either do what we tell them or risk open revolt by the common folk of the country. In other words, they use the suffering of the masses as a political weapon.
We've called actions far less severe "terrorism". Even if you don't want to call it that, there is something evil about punishing a civilian population to force out a dictator that they don't even like. Now, before some neocon brings up Dresden or Hiroshima, we weren't at war with Iraq, and the sanctions did as much to cripple any opposition as the rest of the population.
It's easy to twist statistics to prove whatever you want.
Sayeth the pot.
Regardless of whether one thinks the Iraq War was a good idea or justified, it's mind-boggling that anyone would try to downplay the evils of Saddam Hussein's regime
Except that's a bullshit straw man. The only ones whitewashing crimes or downplaying deaths are the Iraqi war supporters in this thread pretending that more people and more destruction weren't caused by the invasion than if Saddam had simply been left in power.
Are you seriously touting the virtues of Saddam's Iraq over GWB and US Foreign Policy.
You're seriously engaging in deflection with an obvious straw man. Saddam was a bad guy. Iraq would also have hundreds of thousands of people still alive, millions of refugees still in their homes, they would still have a 2nd world infrastructure and health care system, there would have been no sectarian civil war, and civil rights for women wouldn't have been set back 200 years. Both these things can be true at the same time, so...
Of course Iraq would have been better off if the invasion had never happened.
Those numbers or so incredibly dishonest that it is disappointing to see that there are still useful idiots using them.
The number of deaths blamed on Bush always include all the Muslims killed by other Muslims during the civil war that occurred in Iraq, and the people who died in iraq from hunger or disease. The propagandists who pushed those numbers tried to justify them by pretending the place was a utopia before the war and that everything that has gone wrong in that country post-invasion was Bush's fault.
Of course they are Bush's fault. The only dishonesty here is pretending that the deaths in the resulting civil war isn't the fault of both the sectarians who were engaging in it and those who set if off with a dishonest war of choice.
Oh, yeah. Gassing an ethnic minority is a great way to run a country. I'm sure the Kurds loved to see those clouds descending on their villages, killing them indiscriminately. And he suppressed the Islamic extremists so they wouldn't bother his Ba'athist extremists. I could Godwin this post, but I won't. The similarities are already clear enough anyway.
Oh yeah, attack a giant straw man. No one is saying that Saddam was a teddy bear. People are pointing out the fact that yes, Iraq would have been better off if Saddam had been left in power. Hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive, millions wouldn't have been made refugees, the country wouldn't have been bombed back into the stone age, and women's rights wouldn't have been rolled back 200 years. That Saddam was a ruthless authoritarian changes none of that.
And Biden. But he wanted you to forget that when he chastized Ryan for voting for the wars.
True.
1. Break union contracts, good. They are often very costly to the schools. I remember one complaining mid-career 5th grade teacher making over 85,000 in pay and benefits.
Smashing, another elitist who wouldn't touch a teachers job for under six figures. Get tens of thousands in student loan debt, earn a masters degree, work at least ten hours of unpaid overtime a week, take continuing classes for the rest of your career, act as parent/disciplinarian/babysitter/mentor/social worker before you even get to the teaching part, which involves more and more students packed into rooms with less and less money for quality supplies. And then they want to judge you based on performance metrics where the biggest variable is entirely outside of your control: what kind of home the student goes back to at the end of the school day.
Destroy public schools, no. Charter schools are public schools, just not government-run schools,
Not on this planet or on any other. The entire charter school movement is about putting public money in private hands while breaking the teachers unions, period.
but held to the same standards of education
Other than being free to pick and choose students and avoid special needs children entirely, of course./rolls eyes
FDR absolutely opposed the concept of public sector unions
Because fighting with them is the same thing as opposing their existence. Not. But you know who spoke out strongly in favor of collective bargaining? Ronald freaking Reagan.
Public sector unions are the union bosses negotiating with the politicians they help put into office how to put more taxpayer money into union coffers, which goes back around to reelecting those same politicians.
Randian drivel. The average union worker wants a fair days pay for a fair days work, same as you. But when he organizes to negotiate for it, then he becomes a monster in your eyes. Businessmen are free to pool their capital, though, and spend far more money getting far more money from the government....but that's just being a "savvy businessman".
Do you see the kids anywhere in that equation? It isn't.
Only if you're focused on ignoring it, of course. And when Kaplan owns every charter school within 200 miles of your middle class ass, what are you going to do about it? When the rich son of a board member starts bullying your kid, what are you going to do about it? When your daughter turns out to be dyslexic but Kaplan has cut all special education to save a few bucks, what are you going to do about it?
As one famous teacher union boss said, they'll start looking out for kids when the kids start paying union dues.
Ooo! Anecdote time, can I play? I worked at an anti-union shop where a man said to a young woman "I'd like to rape the shit out of you". He was a walking sexual harassment case that was never disciplined by the company because he was buddies with the boss.
Therefore, all non-union companies need to be banned. Like, right now.
You can't put lawmakers in jail for how they vote.
Wall Street bankers are not members of Congress.
Dodd is retired and Frank will soon, so we won't be able to fire them for preventing the higher oversight sought by Bush.
Tired teabagger lie with zero basis in reality. And as if Bush was held up by two Democrats when Republicans were firmly in control of congress. Who do you guys think you're kidding with this crap?
As someone who works in an industry rife with unions (and thankfully not in one), you say this like it's a bad thing....
As someone working in a unionized industry, you're sneering at the higher pay, longer vacations and due process that unions bring? Why don't you go ahead and Go Galt and let us know how that works for you....
Was Saddam giving them billions the way the U.S. does every year with the Israeli military? The Israel that was founded on land stolen from the native population by a bunch of immigrants? The Israel that was illegally expanded in Israel's war of choice in 1967?
Resistance to a hostile military force that has invaded and occupied your homeland is not terrorism.
I'm afraid you are projecting, as far more people died in the invasion and occupation than if Saddam was left in power. You could have left Saddam in power, killing dissidents, and it wouldn't have come to but a percentage of the fraction of the numbers killed in the invasion or resulting civil war.
And that's just a fact that war supporters will have to deal with.
Would you feel better if he was still in power and still killing?
If it meant that hundreds of thousands of people were still alive and millions of refugees were still in their homes? If it meant that girls and women were as free to attend school as men? If it meant that you had constantly running electrical and sewage services rather than a couple hours a day?
When are liberals/dems going to stop trying to lay blame on a president that is long gone.
Laughable. As if you wingers aren't still ranting about the 16th Amendment, FDR, or the CRA. Yet we're supposed to forget the incompetence of Obama's immediate predecessor...who do you think you're kidding?
Ok, so by that way of thinking then if Gore was president then Osama Bin Laden would not have attacked the U.S. and the world trade centers would still be there right?
It's unlikely in the extreme that Gore would have responded to point-blank warnings that Bin Laddin was determined to attack the United States, that he wanted to do it soon, and that he might use hijacked planes to do with with an "Okay, now you've covered your ass" and then ignored it.
you don't have to be a sociopathic libertarian to know that in the era of aging populations there will never be enough money for hc.
But it helps to be a sociopathic libertarian when you want to ignore the fact that socialized medicine provides better care for less money.
yet the waiting queues, shortages and quotas make many people that value their time not bother with it, especially when their life is on the line.
Because people don't deal with waiting queues, shortages and quotas in the United States on a daily basis....oh wait, they do. You wait in an ER, you wait to see a primary physician, you wait to see a specialist, and your insurance company has quotas up the wazoo on everything from where you can see a doctor to how much medication they will to cover to what 50 year old procedures might be denied as "experimental".
It's a first step to single-payer. It's about time the USA makes a step towards re-joining the First World.
The Health Insurance Profit Protection Act is not only not the first step towards single payer, it's the first step towards ending Medicare. Because it provides no government based platform to be expanded upon, the way Social Security did in the 30's. Because if vouchercare is good enough for a low income person of 64 years of age, it's good enough for a low income person of 70 years of age.
Would Nixon have initiated the Great Society and all its culteral consequences?
The "consequence" of not having the elderly die in their homes from the lack of basic medical care? Now, go be a good little Libertarian sociopath and tell us how your standard of living is completely independent of the society in which you live....
Correct. There's a difference. If Romney wins, there will almost certainly be a war with Iran.
That's almost certainly a tautology. McCain was the GOP candidate that was chomping at the bit to "bomb bomb bomb" Iran, not Romney.
Secondly, if Romeny were to become president, Obamabots might remember they were antiwar before Obama decided to embrace war. Speaking of, Obama had gotten away with a lot of shit that would have had Democrats out in the streets if it was Bush doing it, like assassinating Americans or starting a war without Congressional authorization.
Speaking of, Obama's own VP threatened to impeach Bush for hinting at doing to Iran what Obama went ahead and did with Libya: start a war without Congressional authorization.
The Affordable Care Act is an event on the scale of the imposition of an federal income based tax, or the start of the Social Security system. Regardless of your feeling of the act itself, its is highly significant, and its a certainty that it wouldn't have passed if McCain had been elected.
Why, as it's a thoughtfully Republican health insurance (not care) plan? First proposed by the Heritage Foundation when H.W. Bush was running for re-election, then championed by Bob Dole in '96, then implemented by Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts, and it was still a Republican plan when Obama signed it into law.
Before someone asks why the Republicans were suddenly opposed to it, the answer to that is obvious. If a policy supported by Obama is a success, credit will go to Obama. That's why Republicans vote against ideas that were Republican suggestions to begin with, like the end-of-life planning that was smeared as "Death Panels". Secondly, if an Obama policy is going to be a failure or unpopular, they don't want to have their votes attached to it.
Like, oh, say, the mandate to buy junk health insurance. It wont matter that the mandate was a Republican idea or that they don't have a better health care plan as an alternative. They wont be the ones that saddled the poor and middle class with the mandates that Obama ran against but enthusiastically supported as president.
That, and one of the main problems leading to the crash in 2008 was the bankruptcy bill passed in 2006, with one of it's Democratic champions being....Joe Biden. Because it made it much harder for people to declare bankruptcy, particularly over credit card debt. Which meant that unscrupulous banks were willing to hand out money to anyone with a pulse, knowing the new law would make it easier for them to collect.
Now, before some personal responsibility nazi pipes up about how those people shouldn't have taken out loans they couldn't repay, remember that these banks were committing outright fraud against both lenders and investors. And, if the personal responsibility nazi were to go around lending $20 to homeless people, no doubt he would expect people to laugh at him if he expected to be paid back. But if what if a law was passed making it easier for said nazi to harass those homeless people into repaying him?
Oh.. I don't know the first passed health care reform in almost 100 years.
Oh, except that's a total lie. First, we have had health care reform before: Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, ADA, FMLA. Second, and more importantly, what Obama signed was not health care reform. It was health insurance reform. When the problem is the lack of affordable care and a for-profit health insurance industry jacking up rates, that is no small distinction.
Ended Don't Ask Don't Tell.
Another lie. Congress passed a bill ending the codification of DADT, all Obama did was sign it. Three more problems with this:
1) Obama could have halted discharges until legislation was passed with the stroke of a pen, by issuing a stop loss order 2) Meaning over a thousand gay personnel had their lives and careers destroyed while Obama fiddle-farted around telling Congress not to rush repeal 3) The anti-discriminatory language that Obama opposed was removed from the bill, meaning that President Palin is free to go back to discharging gays with a stroke of her pen
Restarted the hunt for and killed Osama bin Laden
Yes, killed an unarmed old man suffering from failing kidneys while he was on the ground. So much easier to avoid the embarrassment of a trial where the defense could present evidence of CIA shenanigans or argue that the U.S. had long been making war on muslims by overthrowing their governments or killing half a million children with sanctions.
Oh, and giving third world paranoia legitimacy about the "real" purpose of vaccination programs by running a fake one to try and find Bin Laddin. Meaning thousands of children will die and another lifetime will pass before we have a chance of eradicating polio.
Smashing, yea capitalism!
He has pretty much done the majority of the items he promised to do on election day.
On what planet? Restoring rights and liberties: promise broken. Ending DADT and DOMA: promise broken (see above). Passing the EFCA: promise broken. No more dumb foreign wars: promise broken. Ending the Bush Tax Cuts: promise broken. Protecting whistleblowers: promise broken, and then some - he's prosecuted more than all previous presidents combined. Backing off state-based medical marijuana: not only has he broken that promise, he's raided 13 times as many dispensaries in thee years than Bush did in eight.
Maybe I'm just young, but most of my adult life has been under Bush, and now Obama. Bush seemed to mostly screw things up. Obama seems to mostly push things in a better direction.
Pushing for cuts to Social Security and Medicare is pushing the country in a better direction? Prosecuting fewer bankers than Bush is pushing the country in a better direction? Arranging the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the planet - from the poor to the rich - with bank bailouts is pushing the country in a better direction?
Unemployment is far higher than when Bush was in office, debt is higher than Bush was in office, wealth inequality is higher than Bush was in office, and we are in more foreign wars than when Bush was in office. Yes, much of this is due to Obama's inheritance of Bush Administration policies.
* Gitmo is still open - good, it should be, he was wrong to say he'd close it and he was right to reverse himself
Stalinist. Can I haz gulag?
* Afghanistan - he increased the effort there in accordance with his promise to do so, which was good policy, and the most common criticism is that he didn't send more or leave them there longer
Two more Obot myths. First, he talked about sending an additional 2-3 brigades, not tripling the level of forces in the country. Second, he did that right after Karzai stole the election, so we were supporting a corrupt government.
* Friendly Congress - yeah, totally, he got nothing done, except you know the culmination of 30 years of fascist activism
FTFY. The Health Insurance Profit Protection Act was first and foremost about protecting the dying insurance industry, not patients. It was a shit plan when the Heritage Foundation first proposed it, it was a shit plan when Bob Dole ran on it in '96, it was a shit plan when it was implemented as Romneycare, and still a big fascist pile of shit when it was signed by Obama.
Because it forces people to buy a junk product at the source of the problem in the first place...for-profit health insurance where the providers try and find new ways to deny your care while increasing your premiums. It contains the same backroom deals with the very same lobbyists that Obama campaigned against in 2008. What baby steps were taken - like ending per-existing conditions - were accompanied by giant steps backward like the mandate.
How cynical can you get? The GOP plays non-stop obstructionism, and then blames the Dems for not getting anything done. The Dems only had 4 months with a filibuster proof majority. The rest of those two years was perpetual GOP filibustering.
Yes, that's the basis for the Helpless Bystander Fable. The problem is it's the liberal version of the GOP's "no one could have predicted" excuse for their inaction in the face of Hurricane Katrina. A false argument that insults the intelligence of the listener.
How is it false? Let us count the ways...
1) The filibuster could have been ended when the new Congress was sworn in with a new set of rules for the Senate, which only requires a simple majority. The GOP was already setting filibuster records when the Dems first took back the Senate in 2006, so they cannot claim they were shocked, shocked! at continued abuse of the filibuster. Obama was running around promising a public option and the Employee Free Choice Act with only 51 Democrats in the Senate, yet he's suddenly a helpless bystander with 59 or 60 Democrats? Bitch please.
2) The filibuster could still be ended via the Nuclear Option, which only takes 50 Democrats + Biden. The filibuster is a Senate rule, not a Constitutional one. So all it would take to amend the Senate rules is a majority vote, with Biden casting the tie-breaking vote if need be. They could do it in the next five minutes if they wanted to.
3) Reconciliation bypasses the filibuster, and could have been used to pass most of the 2008 party platform, with a serious jobs bill to boot. It could have been used to end the Bush Tax Cuts for the rich while keeping those for the middle class....but the Democrats chose not to use it.
4) The Bully Pulpit. If you can think of a bigger sword for the GOP to fall on than obstructing a serious jobs bill in the face of a depression, by all means call up OFA and suggest one.
5) The one and only time you hear about the filibuster or the "60 votes" nonsense is when some liberal idea is being killed. It wasn't an issue for passing telecom immunity, where Reid even ignored a hold from a member of his own party. It wasn't an issue when it came time to reconfirm Bernanke to the Fed, when the supposedly ironclad 60 vote requirement disappeared.
Slashdot Mirror
Why stop now, since you're riding a nice little wave of Islamophobia while ignoring western imperialism?
A country that automatically designates all men and adolescent boys as "militants" when they are killed by drones has no business calling a strike on a government official in a CIA front "terrorism".
1. Western powers spend over 10 years bombing the shit out of predominantly Muslim nations, torture Muslims, drone bomb their countries without declarations of war, impose economy-ruining sanctions, and talk a lot about how much they like freedom and Democracy while simultaneously supporting brutal, but western-friendly, dictators. Case in point: when the U.S. was helping to "liberate" Libya from Gaddafi because he was "attacking his own people", it didn't even bother to stop arms shipments to the governments of Yemen and Bahrain, who were using them to brutally crackdown on their opposition.
2. Muslims get sick of western imperialism, riots ensue.
3. Western media and politicians pretend it's all about a Youtube clip.
He did not lie as I just proved you. The court accepted a set of parameters of what would amount to "sexual relations". Blow jobs fell outside of those set of parameters. Parameters set by the judge you cite, who also rule that whatever happened between Clinton and Monica was irrelevant to whatever happened with Clinton and Jones.
You're wrong. Clinton gave a truthful response in court as to whether or not he had "sexual relations" with Lewisnsky. Deal with it.
Hand waving. If it's not relevant, it's not perjury. Deal with that, too.
Your projection on butthurt over being called out on your selective standards and morals is noted. The simple fact is that you wingers started and stopped caring about perjury when it was a Republican administration doing it just as you stopped caring when the draft dodgers were Republicans.
You, and your hypocritical twins the Obots, can blow that out your asses.
Or, I don't know, go for Option 3: don't drone bomb or invade people that have not attacked us nor are in the process of attacking us. Here's your sign.....
And killed half a million Iraqi children by restricting food and medicine. Which the Secretary of State said was "worth it" when asked.
We've called actions far less severe "terrorism". Even if you don't want to call it that, there is something evil about punishing a civilian population to force out a dictator that they don't even like. Now, before some neocon brings up Dresden or Hiroshima, we weren't at war with Iraq, and the sanctions did as much to cripple any opposition as the rest of the population.
Sayeth the pot.
Except that's a bullshit straw man. The only ones whitewashing crimes or downplaying deaths are the Iraqi war supporters in this thread pretending that more people and more destruction weren't caused by the invasion than if Saddam had simply been left in power.
You're seriously engaging in deflection with an obvious straw man. Saddam was a bad guy. Iraq would also have hundreds of thousands of people still alive, millions of refugees still in their homes, they would still have a 2nd world infrastructure and health care system, there would have been no sectarian civil war, and civil rights for women wouldn't have been set back 200 years. Both these things can be true at the same time, so...
Of course Iraq would have been better off if the invasion had never happened.
Deal with it, war supporters.
Of course they are Bush's fault. The only dishonesty here is pretending that the deaths in the resulting civil war isn't the fault of both the sectarians who were engaging in it and those who set if off with a dishonest war of choice.
Oh yeah, attack a giant straw man. No one is saying that Saddam was a teddy bear. People are pointing out the fact that yes, Iraq would have been better off if Saddam had been left in power. Hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive, millions wouldn't have been made refugees, the country wouldn't have been bombed back into the stone age, and women's rights wouldn't have been rolled back 200 years. That Saddam was a ruthless authoritarian changes none of that.
Deal with it, war supporters.
True.
Smashing, another elitist who wouldn't touch a teachers job for under six figures. Get tens of thousands in student loan debt, earn a masters degree, work at least ten hours of unpaid overtime a week, take continuing classes for the rest of your career, act as parent/disciplinarian/babysitter/mentor/social worker before you even get to the teaching part, which involves more and more students packed into rooms with less and less money for quality supplies. And then they want to judge you based on performance metrics where the biggest variable is entirely outside of your control: what kind of home the student goes back to at the end of the school day.
Not on this planet or on any other. The entire charter school movement is about putting public money in private hands while breaking the teachers unions, period.
Other than being free to pick and choose students and avoid special needs children entirely, of course. /rolls eyes
Because fighting with them is the same thing as opposing their existence. Not. But you know who spoke out strongly in favor of collective bargaining? Ronald freaking Reagan.
Randian drivel. The average union worker wants a fair days pay for a fair days work, same as you. But when he organizes to negotiate for it, then he becomes a monster in your eyes. Businessmen are free to pool their capital, though, and spend far more money getting far more money from the government....but that's just being a "savvy businessman".
Only if you're focused on ignoring it, of course. And when Kaplan owns every charter school within 200 miles of your middle class ass, what are you going to do about it? When the rich son of a board member starts bullying your kid, what are you going to do about it? When your daughter turns out to be dyslexic but Kaplan has cut all special education to save a few bucks, what are you going to do about it?
Ooo! Anecdote time, can I play? I worked at an anti-union shop where a man said to a young woman "I'd like to rape the shit out of you". He was a walking sexual harassment case that was never disciplined by the company because he was buddies with the boss.
Therefore, all non-union companies need to be banned. Like, right now.
Wall Street bankers are not members of Congress.
Tired teabagger lie with zero basis in reality. And as if Bush was held up by two Democrats when Republicans were firmly in control of congress. Who do you guys think you're kidding with this crap?
As someone working in a unionized industry, you're sneering at the higher pay, longer vacations and due process that unions bring? Why don't you go ahead and Go Galt and let us know how that works for you....
Right, because making plans for a possible war is the same thing as waging it.
/facepalm
Was Saddam giving them billions the way the U.S. does every year with the Israeli military? The Israel that was founded on land stolen from the native population by a bunch of immigrants? The Israel that was illegally expanded in Israel's war of choice in 1967?
Resistance to a hostile military force that has invaded and occupied your homeland is not terrorism.
I'm afraid you are projecting, as far more people died in the invasion and occupation than if Saddam was left in power. You could have left Saddam in power, killing dissidents, and it wouldn't have come to but a percentage of the fraction of the numbers killed in the invasion or resulting civil war.
And that's just a fact that war supporters will have to deal with.
If it meant that hundreds of thousands of people were still alive and millions of refugees were still in their homes? If it meant that girls and women were as free to attend school as men? If it meant that you had constantly running electrical and sewage services rather than a couple hours a day?
Your math, and your priorities, need some work.
Laughable. As if you wingers aren't still ranting about the 16th Amendment, FDR, or the CRA. Yet we're supposed to forget the incompetence of Obama's immediate predecessor...who do you think you're kidding?
It's unlikely in the extreme that Gore would have responded to point-blank warnings that Bin Laddin was determined to attack the United States, that he wanted to do it soon, and that he might use hijacked planes to do with with an "Okay, now you've covered your ass" and then ignored it.
But it helps to be a sociopathic libertarian when you want to ignore the fact that socialized medicine provides better care for less money.
Because people don't deal with waiting queues, shortages and quotas in the United States on a daily basis....oh wait, they do. You wait in an ER, you wait to see a primary physician, you wait to see a specialist, and your insurance company has quotas up the wazoo on everything from where you can see a doctor to how much medication they will to cover to what 50 year old procedures might be denied as "experimental".
Any more sociopathic talking points?
The Health Insurance Profit Protection Act is not only not the first step towards single payer, it's the first step towards ending Medicare. Because it provides no government based platform to be expanded upon, the way Social Security did in the 30's. Because if vouchercare is good enough for a low income person of 64 years of age, it's good enough for a low income person of 70 years of age.
The "consequence" of not having the elderly die in their homes from the lack of basic medical care? Now, go be a good little Libertarian sociopath and tell us how your standard of living is completely independent of the society in which you live....
That's almost certainly a tautology. McCain was the GOP candidate that was chomping at the bit to "bomb bomb bomb" Iran, not Romney.
Secondly, if Romeny were to become president, Obamabots might remember they were antiwar before Obama decided to embrace war. Speaking of, Obama had gotten away with a lot of shit that would have had Democrats out in the streets if it was Bush doing it, like assassinating Americans or starting a war without Congressional authorization.
Speaking of, Obama's own VP threatened to impeach Bush for hinting at doing to Iran what Obama went ahead and did with Libya: start a war without Congressional authorization.
Why, as it's a thoughtfully Republican health insurance (not care) plan? First proposed by the Heritage Foundation when H.W. Bush was running for re-election, then championed by Bob Dole in '96, then implemented by Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts, and it was still a Republican plan when Obama signed it into law.
Before someone asks why the Republicans were suddenly opposed to it, the answer to that is obvious. If a policy supported by Obama is a success, credit will go to Obama. That's why Republicans vote against ideas that were Republican suggestions to begin with, like the end-of-life planning that was smeared as "Death Panels". Secondly, if an Obama policy is going to be a failure or unpopular, they don't want to have their votes attached to it.
Like, oh, say, the mandate to buy junk health insurance. It wont matter that the mandate was a Republican idea or that they don't have a better health care plan as an alternative. They wont be the ones that saddled the poor and middle class with the mandates that Obama ran against but enthusiastically supported as president.
That, and one of the main problems leading to the crash in 2008 was the bankruptcy bill passed in 2006, with one of it's Democratic champions being....Joe Biden. Because it made it much harder for people to declare bankruptcy, particularly over credit card debt. Which meant that unscrupulous banks were willing to hand out money to anyone with a pulse, knowing the new law would make it easier for them to collect.
Now, before some personal responsibility nazi pipes up about how those people shouldn't have taken out loans they couldn't repay, remember that these banks were committing outright fraud against both lenders and investors. And, if the personal responsibility nazi were to go around lending $20 to homeless people, no doubt he would expect people to laugh at him if he expected to be paid back. But if what if a law was passed making it easier for said nazi to harass those homeless people into repaying him?
Oh, except that's a total lie. First, we have had health care reform before: Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, ADA, FMLA. Second, and more importantly, what Obama signed was not health care reform. It was health insurance reform. When the problem is the lack of affordable care and a for-profit health insurance industry jacking up rates, that is no small distinction.
Another lie. Congress passed a bill ending the codification of DADT, all Obama did was sign it. Three more problems with this:
1) Obama could have halted discharges until legislation was passed with the stroke of a pen, by issuing a stop loss order
2) Meaning over a thousand gay personnel had their lives and careers destroyed while Obama fiddle-farted around telling Congress not to rush repeal
3) The anti-discriminatory language that Obama opposed was removed from the bill, meaning that President Palin is free to go back to discharging gays with a stroke of her pen
Yes, killed an unarmed old man suffering from failing kidneys while he was on the ground. So much easier to avoid the embarrassment of a trial where the defense could present evidence of CIA shenanigans or argue that the U.S. had long been making war on muslims by overthrowing their governments or killing half a million children with sanctions.
Oh, and giving third world paranoia legitimacy about the "real" purpose of vaccination programs by running a fake one to try and find Bin Laddin. Meaning thousands of children will die and another lifetime will pass before we have a chance of eradicating polio.
Smashing, yea capitalism!
On what planet? Restoring rights and liberties: promise broken. Ending DADT and DOMA: promise broken (see above). Passing the EFCA: promise broken. No more dumb foreign wars: promise broken. Ending the Bush Tax Cuts: promise broken. Protecting whistleblowers: promise broken, and then some - he's prosecuted more than all previous presidents combined. Backing off state-based medical marijuana: not only has he broken that promise, he's raided 13 times as many dispensaries in thee years than Bush did in eight.
Pushing for cuts to Social Security and Medicare is pushing the country in a better direction? Prosecuting fewer bankers than Bush is pushing the country in a better direction? Arranging the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the planet - from the poor to the rich - with bank bailouts is pushing the country in a better direction?
Unemployment is far higher than when Bush was in office, debt is higher than Bush was in office, wealth inequality is higher than Bush was in office, and we are in more foreign wars than when Bush was in office. Yes, much of this is due to Obama's inheritance of Bush Administration policies.
Policies Obama has chosen to continue.
Stalinist. Can I haz gulag?
Two more Obot myths. First, he talked about sending an additional 2-3 brigades, not tripling the level of forces in the country. Second, he did that right after Karzai stole the election, so we were supporting a corrupt government.
FTFY. The Health Insurance Profit Protection Act was first and foremost about protecting the dying insurance industry, not patients. It was a shit plan when the Heritage Foundation first proposed it, it was a shit plan when Bob Dole ran on it in '96, it was a shit plan when it was implemented as Romneycare, and still a big fascist pile of shit when it was signed by Obama.
Because it forces people to buy a junk product at the source of the problem in the first place...for-profit health insurance where the providers try and find new ways to deny your care while increasing your premiums. It contains the same backroom deals with the very same lobbyists that Obama campaigned against in 2008. What baby steps were taken - like ending per-existing conditions - were accompanied by giant steps backward like the mandate.
Yes, that's the basis for the Helpless Bystander Fable. The problem is it's the liberal version of the GOP's "no one could have predicted" excuse for their inaction in the face of Hurricane Katrina. A false argument that insults the intelligence of the listener.
How is it false? Let us count the ways...
1) The filibuster could have been ended when the new Congress was sworn in with a new set of rules for the Senate, which only requires a simple majority. The GOP was already setting filibuster records when the Dems first took back the Senate in 2006, so they cannot claim they were shocked, shocked! at continued abuse of the filibuster. Obama was running around promising a public option and the Employee Free Choice Act with only 51 Democrats in the Senate, yet he's suddenly a helpless bystander with 59 or 60 Democrats? Bitch please.
2) The filibuster could still be ended via the Nuclear Option, which only takes 50 Democrats + Biden. The filibuster is a Senate rule, not a Constitutional one. So all it would take to amend the Senate rules is a majority vote, with Biden casting the tie-breaking vote if need be. They could do it in the next five minutes if they wanted to.
3) Reconciliation bypasses the filibuster, and could have been used to pass most of the 2008 party platform, with a serious jobs bill to boot. It could have been used to end the Bush Tax Cuts for the rich while keeping those for the middle class....but the Democrats chose not to use it.
4) The Bully Pulpit. If you can think of a bigger sword for the GOP to fall on than obstructing a serious jobs bill in the face of a depression, by all means call up OFA and suggest one.
5) The one and only time you hear about the filibuster or the "60 votes" nonsense is when some liberal idea is being killed. It wasn't an issue for passing telecom immunity, where Reid even ignored a hold from a member of his own party. It wasn't an issue when it came time to reconfirm Bernanke to the Fed, when the supposedly ironclad 60 vote requirement disappeared.